In recent remarks to the League of Conservation Voters, Obama said that he expects the rest of the world, including developing countries and the largest economies, to do what he is doing to their own energy consumers.

“[W]e’ve got to lead by example. They’re waiting to see what America does.” Obama said on June 25. “And I’m convinced when America proves what’s possible, other countries are going to come along.”

About that.

Asia’s two largest economies are not waiting to see what America does, and they’re showing no sign of following Obama’s anti-coal lead.

China’s chief climate official Xie Zhenhua said China should not be subject to the same rules for greenhouse gas emissions as the United States and other rich countries, signaling that Beijing will oppose any attempt to impose them at next year’s world climate conference.

“We are in different development stages, we have different historical responsibilities and we have different capacities,” Xie told reporters.

Japan is not only not following Obama’s war on coal, it is increasing coal use in new domestic energy projects, according to Mari Iwata in the Wall Street Journal today.

Japan said Wednesday it would step up support for coal-fired power plants in developing nations, challenging a U.S. policy that seeks to discourage such plants in an effort to fight global warming. […] The move represents a repudiation of the Obama administration’s strict stance of carbon emissions. Washington is talking to members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of developed nations, about a rule that would ban national export-credit agencies from financing new overseas coal power plants.

Japan understands that coal can safely power its economy.

Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s growth strategy, Tokyo seeks each year to back overseas coal power-plant projects worth about $4 billion. Typically those projects have Japanese investors and use at least some Japanese equipment. While the annual target hasn’t been reached yet, several major projects have recently gotten under way.

Japan has long supported energy efficiency. Unlike Barack Obama, who claims to support an “all-of-the-above” strategy that in reality only supports the development of expensive so-called “clean” or “green” energy, Japan actually does support all-of-the-above.

They’re not buying the Luddite, anti-energy radicalism that Barack Obama is selling on energy.

Bryan Preston has been a leading conservative blogger and opinionator since founding his first blog in 2001. Bryan is a military veteran, worked for NASA, was a founding blogger and producer at Hot Air, was producer of the Laura Ingraham Show and, most recently before joining PJM, was Communications Director of the Republican Party of Texas.

The German media outlet der Spiegel ran an expose on the costly disaster of Germany's renewable energy movement. Last year over 600,000 families had their electricity turned off for non-payment. Many more families barely kept the bills "affordable" by turning the thermostat low and shivering through the winter.

It's ironic that the president whose signature achievement used the word "affordable" in it is now doing his very best to make our energy "unaffordable" to low income families.

One of the many inanities of so-called "green" energy is that countries that embrace it the least have an economic advantage over those that jump in the most. Wind and solar are expensive ways to generate electricity, and in countries that switch to them, individuals and industry will eventually get hammered. Germany is a good example, where companies complained to Merkel that her policies were making them uncompetitive. They are building coal plants again:

Mainly because countries like Japan and China are led (more or less) by practical people and not loonies. Well, let's say their loonies know how to get things done while our loonies are floating off to la-la-land on a cloud of Progressive ideology. Even the Chinese - past masters of ideological insanity - aren't as disconnected from reality as our own politicians. It's sad.

One country lowered CO2 rates after Kyoto (aside, maybe for a few Eastern European countries that accidentally deindustrialized after the collapse of the USSR). That country is the US, and we didn't even sign the wretched Kyoto treaty. Barack doesn't do incremental, does he?

I believe nuke plants and nuclear waste can be made relatively safe in the US. I'm not sure that's true of Japan. Earthquakes. Typhoons. Limited real estate on which to build. On the other hand, the Japanese are supposed to be masters of earthquake-proofing. Maybe they can manage it - if they're not too gunshy after Fukushima.

And Fukushima only happened because of the perfect storm of all of the failsafes getting hit and failing. It was an extremely unlikely event that actually did happen. Even with fewer failsafes than Fukushima, in most places in the continental US a nuke plant would be perfectly fine. In Cali, a Fukushima-level plant would be needed. Not impossible to do. Of course, Cali won't ever get a nuke plant until all the ecomentalists die out.

31 weeks ago

Report Abuse

31 weeks agoEditLink To Comment• Report Abuse

This comment has been reported.
Click here
to view it anyway.

View All

... (show more)

Update CommentCancel

2 Trackbacks to “Asia Tells Obama to Take a Hike on His Energy Schemes”